At length the motionless brown figure huddled in the great chair, not
looking at Philip but out over the wide green valley, began to speak in
a low, measured tone, as a dreamer might tell his dream, or a priest his
vision:

"A breath of life has come again to me through you. Centuries ago our
ancestors were brothers--far back in the direct line, brothers--the monks
have proved it.

"Now I shall have my spite of the Vaufoutaines, and now shall I have
another son--strong, and with good blood in him to beget good blood."

A strange, lean sort of smile passed over his lips, his eyebrows
twitched, his hands clinched the arm of the chair wherein he sat,
and he made a motion of his jaws as though enjoying a toothsome morsel.

"H'm, Henri Vaufontaine shall see--and all his tribe! They shall not
feed upon these lands of the d'Avranches, they shall not carouse at my
table when I am gone and the fool I begot has returned to his Maker. The
fault of him was never mine, but God's--does the Almighty think we can
forget that? I was ever sound and strong. When I was twenty I killed
two men with my own sword at a blow; when I was thirty, to serve the King
I rode a hundred and forty miles in one day--from Paris to Dracourt it
was. We d'Avranches have been men of power always. We fought for
Christ's sepulchre in the Holy Land, and three bishops and two
archbishops have gone from us to speak God's cause to the world. And my
wife, she came of the purest stock of Aquitaine, and she was constant, in
her prayers. What discourtesy was it then, for God, who hath been served
well by us, to serve me in return with such mockery: to send me a